rrect. On the contrary, children who hear a mixture of low and high
vulgarity before their own habits are fixed, must, whenever they
speak, continually blunder; they have no rule to guide their judgment
in their selection from the variety of dialects which they hear;
probably they may often be reproved for their mistakes, but these
reproofs will be of no avail, whilst the pupils continue to be puzzled
between the example of the nursery and of the drawing-room. It will
cost much time and pains to correct these defects, which might have
been with little difficulty prevented. It is the same with other bad
habits. Falsehood, caprice, dishonesty, obstinacy, revenge, and all
the train of vices which are the consequences of mistaken or neglected
education, which are learned by bad example, and which are not
inspired by nature, need scarcely be known to children whose minds
have from their infancy been happily regulated. Such children should
sedulously be kept from contagion. No books should be put into the
hands of this happy class of children, but such as present the best
models of virtue: there is no occasion to shock them with caricatures
of vice. Such caricatures they will even understand to be well drawn,
because they are unacquainted with any thing like the originals.
Examples to deter them from faults to which they have no propensity,
must be useless, and may be dangerous. For the same reason that a book
written in bad language, should never be put into the hands of a child
who speaks correctly, a book exhibiting instances of vice, should
never be given to a child who thinks and acts correctly. The love of
novelty and of imitation, is so strong in children, that even for the
pleasure of imitating characters described in a book, or actions which
strike them as singular, they often commit real faults.

To this danger of catching faults by sympathy, children of the
greatest simplicity are, perhaps, the most liable, because they least
understand the nature and consequences of the actions which they
imitate.

During the age of imitation, children should not be exposed to the
influence of any bad examples until their habits are formed, and until
they have not only the sense to choose, but the fortitude to abide
by, their own choice. It may be said, that "children must know that
vice exists; that, even amongst their own companions, there are some
who have bad dispositions; they cannot mix even in the society of
children, wit